Title: You Should Be Dancing
Rating: K
Spoilers: 'On My Way', 'Big Brother' and 'Saturday Night Glee-ver' and Quinn's storyline in all three. Some mild Season 1 spoilers for babygate.
Notes: Yeah, so in my headcanon, Quinn's like a total disco lover (watch the promo for 3x16: the 'Disco Sucks!' bit they edited in the ep to show everyone but Quinn and Artie. Not only is Quinn pretty much the only one not hating on disco, she actually looks mildly upset that everyone else is) and like everyone else, I wondered why she wasn't in the episode, thus this fic. I think this is a little Faberry-ish if you squint and the light hits it right, but since that's like all of Quinn and Rachel's interactions on the show, you can just go with it. Hope you like it~
It's Monday, a whole weekend gone by since the glee club's sudden disco-extravaganza and Quinn thinks she's just about ready to set foot (or wheel, as the case may be) inside the choir room again.
Probably.
Okay, so maybe she's hiding out in the girl's bathroom and giving herself a twenty-minute breather before glee today, but after that? She'd be so ready.
"Quinn?"
The sound of the door opening and a voice calling her name snaps Quinn out of her thoughts and makes her jump slightly. She doesn't need to turn to know who the voice belongs to – she thinks there's something about being alone in a bathroom that sets off an alarm in Rachel Berry's head, a miniature siren that declared she needed company and a serious talk ASAP.
The thought makes her smirk; the little diva did often claim to be psychic after all.
Rachel makes her way into her line of sight, practically radiating enthusiasm, and she can't help but relax. Quinn's missed the other girl during her few days of self imposed isolation, but she hadn't realized just how much she'd come to enjoy Rachel's company until she found herself deprived of it.
"It's wonderful to see you again Quinn," Rachel gushes, giving her a smile that Quinn finds herself matching almost unconsciously, "we've all missed you for the past few days in glee club. I in particular found myself disappointed to realize I would be unable to hear you sing any disco numbers when you failed to join in for our final session of the week."
Quinn drops her eyes from Rachel's own once she registers the disappointment in them and shrugs her shoulders in what she hopes is a nonchalant way. She doesn't really want Rachel to push this.
"Sorry, guess I just wasn't down with the whole disco fever thing."
"No?" Rachel asks, confused, "Quinn, I distinctly remember your lack of objection when Mr. Shue proposed his week of disco to us. Considering this, I thought perhaps you held some affinity for the genre, was I wrong?"
"No, I just-"
"Were you worried about Coach Sylvester's dance floor then? I know it looked quite fragile but Artie was able to use his chair on it with no problem. Even with the added weight there wasn't a scratch to be seen, so there wouldn't have been any concern with you wanting to dance as well."
She sighs. Knowingly or otherwise, Rachel's hit the nail on the head, or half on the head anyway. She could care less about the Coach's floor and how durable it is, but Rachel's not wrong in guessing that Quinn's wheelchair is the issue here. She's not sure if she wants to tell Rachel this though – she still catches the other girl looking at her with a guilty expression from time to time. Rachel's always had a habit of ignoring her advice, so Quinn isn't surprised to see that her insistence that the accident wasn't her fault hasn't completely stuck.
Deciding to go for what she thinks will throw Rachel off the topic; she nods at her suggestion, hoping the diva will buy the act.
"Yeah, that was it. I know Artie moved around on it without a problem, but I was just so nervous I'd break it. I'm still not that great at steering so I got a little paranoid."
Laughing a little for effect, she starts to wheel herself around Rachel and towards the door, praying that just for once the diva will go along with what she says and not think about it any more than she has to.
"Quinn, wait."
She's within arm's length of the door when Rachel's voice calls her back and she can't stop the brief scowl that flashes across her face when she hears the words. Bracing herself for a long discussion, she slowly swivels herself back around until she's facing Rachel once again.
"From what Artie tells me, you've been getting a lot better with the steering and overall handling of your wheelchair, which leads me to think that your paranoia about the dance floor isn't what caused you to miss several days of glee practice."
She takes several steps forwards until she's within touching distance and Quinn's eyes widen as Rachel brushes her skirt underneath her legs and takes a seat on the grubby floor of the bathroom. For a second it feels like they're at a party, or a sleepover and they're about to share gossip rather than Quinn's issues.
"What's the real reason you didn't want to come to glee for this past week?"
Something about this situation, about the way Rachel's sat herself down and asked her such an earnest question with nothing but concern in her voice shatters Quinn's resolve completely. She knows she's caught. The lies she'd had built up on her tongue fade away into silence and she moves her gaze away from Rachel's trying to figure out what she wants to say.
There's a heavy quiet between them before Quinn says, finally:
"My mom's never had a job."
There's confusion on Rachel's face already, but she doesn't interrupt and Quinn feels the best way to explain is to elaborate.
"She's never worked at anything other than being a good housewife and a mother, my father always told her that she'd never have to work, that he'd be the provider."
She stops and sneers at that for a moment, the irony of Russell still 'providing' alimony payments not lost on her, before she shakes her head to rid herself of the thought of Russell Fabray. She doesn't want to go anywhere near the subject of her father if she doesn't have to.
"When I was younger she was always at home, but I only really noticed it in the summer when I didn't have school. Back then, when Frannie was at cheer camp and dad was at work and it was just the two of us, she'd put on music while she was cleaning around the house."
"She had this CD," she smiled fondly at this, "it was this Seventies greatest hits collection. It had all these classic disco singers on it: Gloria Gaynor, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic, the Bee Gees…she used to play it and sing along while she worked. Sometimes, when I was smaller, she'd stop what she was doing and pick me up and we'd go dancing around the kitchen or wherever, singing our hearts out."
"That sounds lovely," Rachel says fondly.
"It was. I think the last time we sang and danced like that was the summer before I came to McKinley."
"What changed?"
"I guess I did. After everything with Finn and Puck and having Beth, I stopped being that little girl in her eyes. I tried to change it back, once, about a week after I moved back in. She was cooking dinner and I switched on the stereo, picked a song and played it. I thought maybe, since she'd let me come back home, that she was saying it was alright again, that we could go back to being a mother and daughter who just danced around like we didn't have a care in the world. I was wrong."
Quinn pauses, swallowing at the lump in her throat, it's still a little hard to think about despite the fact that she and her mother are on their way to being on good terms again.
"She didn't even look at me. She just moved around me and turned the music off again."
"Quinn…" Rachel starts to interrupt, but Quinn holds up her hand to stop the words. There's more she needs to say, and if she doesn't get it out now, she knows she'll lose the nerve.
"It's not just that, even though that's a big part of it. If Mr. Shue would have said maybe even a month ago 'let's do some disco in glee' I'd have been the first one up there. I was starting to feel that sense of freedom again: my life was going places and I could have just been that girl who danced around to cheesy seventies music without any thought to how dumb I'd look. But now…" she gestures towards her legs, trusting that Rachel will get the implication.
"It's not even that I can't dance. It's just that I'm not in that carefree place anymore, my life's dragged me down again."
She doesn't realize there are tears on her cheeks until Rachel's up, reaching forwards and brushing them away with the pads of her thumbs. Her hands linger for a moment and Quinn searches the brown eyes staring into her own. Of all people, she thinks Rachel is the one who'd be most likely to understand the feeling of suffocating circumstances. Except Rachel has always had the determination to rise above those circumstances – she'd never ever given up on her dream of making it to Broadway no matter what Lima had thrown at her and Quinn's trying so, so hard to grasp on to that same optimism she admires in Rachel.
Rachel breaks away suddenly and Quinn is left bewildered, before she sees a very typical Rachel Berry brand of determination in the little star's eyes. It's one she's missed since even before she'd announced her engagement to Finn and she enjoys the feeling of that confidence as Rachel grasps the handles of her wheelchair and pushes her out of the bathroom.
She recognizes the familiar route to the choir room as Rachel starts to speak.
"Coach Sylvester still hasn't cleared the dance floor out of the choir room yet, I know because I heard her arguing about it with Mr. Schue this morning."
This draws a snort from Quinn who wouldn't expect anything less of the Coach whether she was helping the club or not. Rachel laughs after a minute as well, evidently reaching the same conclusion and the sound briefly distracts Quinn from the pearly white floor of the choir room as Rachel pushes her in. She pushes her to the edge of the raised floor wordlessly and Quinn is puzzled, watching as the other girl makes her way over to where the seemingly omnipresent Jazz band sits at the opposite end of the room, instruments in hand. They share words- the same process occurs with Brad at the piano- and the smile on Rachel's face as she returns adds to the utter confusion on Quinn's.
"I won't turn the floor lights on, since I theorize I'd break them somehow. Nevertheless, we have around ten minutes before the club is scheduled to meet for today, a perfect amount of time."
"For what?" Quinn blurts, having no idea where at all this conversation is going. In response, Rachel simply nods towards Brad and the band and a few chords strike out across the room. She recognizes the intro, but isn't sure what the point is. There isn't much time to think about it before Rachel's stepping up and sliding an arm under Quinn's legs.
"Rachel! Wha-?"
"Relax Quinn, years of morning elliptical training has strengthened my arms to a surprising degree and dancing toughens arm muscles more than you'd think."
There isn't much room for her to protest, seeing as Rachel's already hoisted Quinn up into her arms. She finds herself wrapping her arms around Rachel's neck unthinkingly, agreeing with the statement. Somehow, this is the safest she's felt in months.
They're swaying slightly as more instruments add to the melody and Rachel's talking again, voice soothing.
"You can't let life get in your way Quinn. This, your legs, they won't stop you from going to Yale, or graduating, or even from dancing on the stage at Nationals like you said yourself. You can be that carefree girl again any time you want to be, regardless of what's going on around you and that's what I want you to do now. Close your eyes, listen and just be."
Her eyes are already shut by the time Rachel finishes and she just takes it all in. Her tension's put aside for a moment as her impromptu dance partner takes to the song lyrics.
"I used to spend most of my time
just being alone, yes, I did.
Nothing to do, no place to go
just stayed at home."
"So I put my blues upon the shelf
and I made up my mind
To live a little myself
so I went on down to a disco."
"Disco, that's where
the happy people go
And they're just dancing along
to a perfect song at the disco."
It feels a little like home.